I am not seeing the rationality in Klein's analysis.

"If you told me I had a 35 percent chance of winning a million dollars tomorrow, I’d be excited." The difference is that presumably he [the speaker] could have a near infinite number of things happen to him. So picking one and giving it much greater odds than one could reasonably expect (given most contests that grant that kind of monetary rewards) does siginify a pretty unusual situation which he should be thrilled about.

However, for all intents and purposes, the winner of the election is a binary choice. (Let's say we have 999 of a 1000 units of probability to distribute between two candidates). I think it is a given that both candidates at the level of the general election are pretty excited to be there, given that they have radically greater odds than the rest of the eligible population.

But all that should be taken for granted by any adult with any familiarity with the system. Thus, a model that predicts one candidate over the other at 60/40, let alone 75/25, odds/confidence level is not any kind of good, exciting news for the other guy [Romney in Silver's model]. Of course Silver isn't ruling out the possibility. And the stakes are high, certainly greater than a million dollars. But nonetheless, 35% to win a million dollars when you didn't know the possibility existed is different than 35% to win the presidency when you are one of only two candidates.

Edit: Just thought of a better way to phrase the above--Whether news of 35% odds is good & exciting or bad & dispiriting depends on one's priors. I would assume the challenger in a pretty divided country would have had 40-45% odds to begin with and wouldn't be excited to update downwards.